Friday, April 20, 2007
Staff photo by Shawn Patrick Ouellette
Staff Sgt. Gary Jandreau, left, of Fort Kent has survived 10 improvised explosive device attacks, earning him the nickname "The IED Magnet." Each time he's walked away without so much as a scratch. Sgt. Lenny Hanson, right, of Crawford has survived four.
EDITOR'S NOTE
COLUMNIST BILL NEMITZ and photographer Shawn Patrick Ouellette are providing coverage through April 25 of Mainers serving in Iraq.
CAMP NAVISTAR, Kuwait - They call him "The IED Magnet" -- and with good reason.
Ten times since he arrived here last July with Alpha Company of the 1-121 Field Artillery Battalion, Staff Sgt. Gary Jandreau, 45, of Fort Kent has witnessed the sudden boom and enveloping fireball that are the trademarks of an insurgent's improvised explosive device.
And 10 times, Jandreau has walked away without so much as a scratch.
When was the first?
"Day 3," Jandreau, one of 77 members of the Maine Army National Guard serving here, replied during a blissfully quiet moment this week.
"Oh, it was unbelievable," he said with his French-tinted accent. "I just remember looking up and this big ball of fire coming straight at us. It went right over us. And it was like you blank out for a second. You don't remember that second. And the cloud settled down, the smoke settled down. And I noticed the truck in front of us disappeared. We thought it must have gone forward to meet the rest of the convoy (at a pre-designated safe zone)."
Actually, the tractor-trailer truck, driven by a civilian, was 150 meters off the road. "When we brought him to the chopper, he looked still alive," Jandreau said of the driver. "But then we heard later that he had died along the way."
Welcome to Operation Iraqi Freedom?
Jandreau nodded.
"I thought to myself, 'I still got a long ways to go -- 362 days,'Ý" he replied. "I thought, 'If this is what it's going to be like for the remainder of my tour 'Ý"
Sitting next to Jandreau, Sgt. Lenny Hanson, 31, of Crawford smiled in quiet understanding. He's witnessed four IED attacks in the past nine months -- and he too has escaped injury.
"My first was in October," Hanson said. "I was the gunner (in a Humvee) and the HET (heavy equipment transport) directly behind us got hit. It took out the whole right front and side of the truck."
The truck, which was hauling a huge -- and heavy -- Abrams M-1 battle tank, was destroyed.
"Luckily for us, they were aiming at a big-money target, not us," said Hanson. "Because that really would have disabled us."
For almost two hours Wednesday, the two soldiers spoke matter-of-factly about this blast and that blast, about who does what when a truck goes down, about the constant danger whenever they leave this camp to provide security for military and civilian convoys heading into and out of an increasingly dangerous war zone.
But when their visitor asked them about what happened last Oct. 25, their demeanors darkened noticeably.
Oct. 25 was different.
The mission was not an easy one. A convoy of trucks was assigned to carry a small fleet of Abrams M-1 battle tanks from Kuwait to Forward Operating Base Warhorse in the northern Iraq town of Baqubah.
Jandreau would command the three-Humvee detail -- he was in one, Hanson in another -- that would provide "escort security" along the roughly 400-mile trip. He, in turn, would answer to the "convoy commander," a staff sergeant with the transportation unit driving the heavy trucks.
"Sometimes, I just get this feeling," Jandreau said. "Sometimes you just feel like something's going to happen."
Listening to the young convoy commander conduct his pre-trip safety briefing, Jandreau had that feeling. So, when the briefing was over, "The IED Magnet" spoke up.
"Remember, you guys are going with me," Jandreau told the circle of soldiers. "I'm known for bad luck. If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all!"
The other soldiers laughed. Some teased Jandreau.
"I mean it," he insisted. "Be sure to put on your IBAs (individual body armor) and stuff. And stay inside those trucks."
From the start, problems plagued the convoy. They were slowed the first day by flat tires, a frequent problem because of the heavy loads and the "road spikes" insurgents often wedge between the cracks of Highway Tampa (a main supply route into Iraq).
Then came the IED attack -- Hanson's first --Ýon a heavy transport vehicle. After the blast, in which nobody was injured, the convoy limped into a forward operating base for repairs that lasted three days.
The military hierarchy, meanwhile, was getting anxious -- both at FOB Warhorse and the transportation group headquarters in Kuwait.
"The guys on the ground wanted their Abrams," said Jandreau. "And their higher-up is pressuring (the convoy commander), saying 'Hey look, you guys are late. Push your guys. Get 'em up here!'Ý"
The convoy, like most in Iraq, was under orders to travel only under the relatively safe cover of night. Normally that would have meant turning off Highway Tampa and heading for a base near the Baghdad International Airport, where the convoy would rest for the day.
But at 3:45 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 25, Hanson sat in the convoy's rear gun truck and watched the exit to Baghdad International go by.
"I knew our travel window," Hanson said. "So I called up (on the radio) and said, 'Hey, we just passed our turn. What are we doing?'Ý"
"We're going to push to Anaconda," (a camp near Balad, about two hours farther north), the convoy commander replied. "We need to get there."
It would be dark, barely, for two more hours. If anything went wrong, the convoy would be running in daylight through one of northern Baghdad's most volatile neighborhoods.
"The pucker level went up," Jandreau said (referring to an anatomical reaction involving fear and one's backside).
Putting it more tactfully, Hanson said, "Our situational awareness was increasing as the sun came up. We understood that it was a hot area. We did not understand their logic -- their battalion pushing us through."
Riding in his Humvee, seeing the dawn begin to glow on the eastern horizon, Hanson clicked on his radio and said, to no one in particular, "What are these guys trying to do, earn us a Purple Heart?"
The small arms fire began just south of an Iraqi police checkpoint in northwest Baghdad. A lone insurgent with an AK-47 popped up from behind a wall in the heavily urban area and began spraying the convoy with bullets.
He hit and disabled one of the convoy's un-armored "white trucks," which are driven by civilians. Jandreau's gunner let loose from his turret with a burst from his 240 Bravo machine gun and the insurgent went down.
But it was only the beginning. More fire came from the north side of the road as the convoy tried to get through the serpentine checkpoint and to a safe zone. The attackers took aim at another civilian truck, this time hitting its driver.
"He'd taken rounds in both ankles and couldn't stop, he couldn't brake," Hanson said. "And the IP (Iraqi police) see this truck coming down on their checkpoint, not stopping, and they don't know what's going on. So they shoot him in the chest."
Within minutes, the sniper fire had become a fusillade.
"I don't think they had planned this," Jandreau said. "I think they just thought, 'Hey look! The Americans are out here and we've got them.' And one called another, and another called another -- and before you knew it, it started escalating and escalating and escalating."
Then, a major problem arose. A white truck hauling an M-1 Abrams took a bullet through the engine block. The truck was completely disabled -- and a 60-ton, $4.3 million piece of high-tech military machinery was stranded just outside the checkpoint's traffic lane.
"The pucker level was really high then," said Jandreau. "We're taking small arms fire from both sides of the road. We're having TCN (third country national) operators getting injured. Now I'm really worried about U.S. soldiers getting wounded.
"There were a million things going through my mind: What are we going to do if we have an American soldier who gets killed? What happens if we have one who gets kidnapped? A lot of things."
Jandreau got on the radio and called for an Army medevac helicopter while Hanson, an emergency medical technician back home in Maine, dressed two civilian drivers' gunshot wounds behind a protective barrier. In less than two minutes, the chopper arrived.
Jandreau also called for a quick reaction force, but the military station on the other end was going through a shift change; he learned later that his request got lost in the shuffle.
Up the road several miles, however, four Stryker armored patrol vehicles heard the call and rushed to the scene.
"We're here to help you," they radioed Jandreau as they got close. "Where do you want us?"
"Two in the front and two in the rear," Jandreau hollered back into his radio. "And I'll hug you later."
While the Strykers and the Humvees laid down suppressive fire -- and the insurgents scurried around from building to building taking up new positions -- the U.S. soldiers decided to winch the stranded Abrams off its disabled trailer and onto an empty spare.
"But the brakes were locked," said Hanson.
One soldier from the transportation unit said he thought he might be able to drive it -- at least off one trailer and onto another.
"But then we saw it was padlocked," Hanson said.
Hanson and the other soldier headed up with a set of bolt cutters. As they worked on the padlock, insurgent bullets began dinging off the metal all around them.
Jandreau, meanwhile, had summoned the convoy commander back from the safe zone, where the front half of the convoy had taken refuge.
"He really didn't know what to do," said Jandreau. As safety-escort commander, Jandreau had so far coordinated the entire response to the attack: calling in the medevac, calling for wreckers, calling for more firepower.
"The CC (convoy commander) was still functioning, but he didn't understand the tactical situation," said Hanson. "He needed some guidance."
The young staff sergeant finally appeared, and Jandreau got out of his gun truck.
"I was pretty pissed," Jandreau said. "I was talking to him -- telling him, 'We need to get these trucks moving!'Ý"
Then, without warning, a hailstorm of bullets began flying right between them.
"I looked at him, he looked at me, and we both started running," Jandreau said. "I'm not kidding. There were rounds hitting in front of me. There were rounds hitting on the side of me. I was making sure I didn't lose my step and you could see the rounds hitting the tar and sparking. It was like everything was in slow motion. There's a million things running through your mind. It was unbelievable."
The two men took cover in a heavy truck's wheel well. But round by round, the bullets got closer. So they took off at a dead run, looking for better cover.
A civilian driver who had fled his cab took up the same spot they had just vacated. Jandreau, by now lying prone on the pavement, looked back and saw the man get shot in the hand.
"Are you OK?" he screamed.
"Good! Good!" the driver replied, holding his bleeding hand and motioning toward the rear of the stalled convoy. "Go! Go!"
"I'll send someone back to get you!" Jandreau hollered and ran, along with the convoy commander, for his Humvee.
Once inside, Jandreau turned to the young staff sergeant.
"I don't care if you have to drag these trucks, I don't care if you have to drive them on flat tires," he said. "But we're getting in these trucks and we're moving! We're getting out of here! This convoy's moving!"
Pausing on the memory, Jandreau shook his head and smiled.
"I had to pretty much take control," he said.
Hanson, meanwhile, was still under fire atop the Abrams. Hopping down to what he thought was the protected southern side of the vehicle, he got a rude surprise.
"They started firing from the south as well," he said. "And nobody laying down cover knew they were over there."
Hanson summoned his gun truck and, walking along the inside of it for cover, he slowly made his way to the wounded civilian Jandreau had called in. They loaded the man, frightened and bleeding, into the Humvee.
The convoy commander eventually made it back to the head of his convoy. Thinking the rear half was behind him, he ordered the lead truck to make for Camp Taji, the nearest forward operating base.
But the rear half, by now under the complete control of Jandreau, had stalled getting up a highway ramp.
"Basically, they left us behind," he said.
The Stryker patrol secured the Abrams tank until a recovery team could come and haul it off. Five disabled white trucks were also left behind -- by that night, CNN was showing pictures of them completely engulfed in flames.
Start to finish, the firefight lasted four hours.
Finally arriving at FOB Taji, a livid Jandreau went looking for the convoy commander. Jandreau and Hanson had already received direct orders from Alpha Company to keep things civil, but the Mainer with the Franco-American accent still had a thing or two he wanted to get off his chest.
"I went around the back of one of the buildings and finally found him," Jandreau said. "And he was broken down, crying."
What could Jandreau say?
"That really got to me," Jandreau said quietly. "You know what I'm saying?"
Several months and a full investigation later (the Army laid most of the blame on the sloppy shift change involving the quick reaction force), Jandreau and Hansen still find themselves talking -- and sometimes losing sleep -- over what happened that day.
"If those guys knew how to shoot, there is no reason I'm sitting here right now," Hanson said.
"I think I would have gotten it, too," said Jandreau. "I don't know how I made it without being touched at all. It was unbelievable."
They've headed out on countless convoys since -- each was scheduled for a different trip Thursday night -- and they've each passed through the same stretch of highway where the October attack occurred.
The first time he returned to that spot, Hanson was serving as the gunner aboard another Humvee. About a mile away, he threw up in his gun turret.
"I'd like to think it was the food," Hanson said. "But I don't think it was."
Now, with just under three months remaining on their one-year deployment, they're literally counting the days.
Jandreau thinks about his house and two-and-a-half acres atop a hill outside peaceful Fort Kent, and about his job running a forklift for Maine Woods Co. in Portage. About how his son's Eagle Scout award presentation has been postponed so he can be there. About the trip he and his wife will take late this summer to wherever.
"Away from it all," Jandreau said.
Will he talk about what happened here?
"No," he said. "I don't want to bring that up with my family."
Why not?
"It's just memories," he replied.
Hanson, who works full time as a National Guard recruiter, is just as eager to see his wife and kids in Crawford, to reconnect with his old buddy, Capt. David Sivret, who served as chaplain to the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion in Mosul in 2004-05. Sivret also happens to be Hanson's pastor at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Calais.
"Chappy and I have been in touch," Hanson said, not needing to say more.
But for now, these two soldiers mostly lean on each other.
Not long ago, Hanson had a Velcro tag made for Jandreau to put just above the Maine patch on his desert camouflage uniform. It reads, not surprisingly, "The IED Magnet."
Some might consider it a jinx. But not these two.
Looking over at his buddy for life, Hanson smiled and said, "Look at how many times he's been hit. He's the luckiest person here."
Staff Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at:
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previous page | next page1-10 of 15 comments:
To the Sarge of OOB. Its awful easy to sit back, on your A** in your arm chair eating twinkies and run your suck about what isn't being done, when what these, The Real Men of the World, Leave their Families to defend the Honor of the Star and Stripes. You are a tainted Ignorant Individual.report abuse
I still remember us all as little kids. Certainly not someone being shot at every day. We keep you in our prayers for your safe return to home.
Safe travels, go with your instincts, god bless.
Donna Akerson Green report abuse
Thank you for your devotion and sacrifice. You are on the front lines defending our freedom and making the world a much safer place for all of us. May God keep you safe and may you always know how deeply we appreciate the sacrifices that you have made and will continue to make in the future.
Thank you for your patriotism and working so hard to bring stability to some very dangerous places. You are truly a hero.
May you continue to be protected in battle and come home to your family soon.
God Speed.report abuse
Len Hansonreport abuse
God speed to you all. report abuse
avoid my CO & 1st sergent. But in combat-training exercises with the Canadians, I excelled
in performing my military duties flawlessly, although I cheated regularily, catching zzzzz's
in the bush, while RA advisors tried to catch us, National Guard or (NO GO'S) slacking off. I miss those days, guys!report abuse
NH Army National Guardsman, of Bravo Company(Plymouth, NH) 197th Field Artillery Battalion.
I was a (E-4,Specialist)(76C-Maintenance crew, Records & Tamms Clerk) Trained in basic @ Fort
Leonard Wood,MO & Fort Lee,VA. Dates of service(1986-89') re-enlisted with the Army Reserve MP
Unit of (Manchester,NH) for 3 months, and was discharged in 1991.******I feel refreshed with
joy and inexpressible admiration for the "uncommon committment and valor" of the Maine Army National Guard to accomplish their
combat-intensive missions on the bloody battlefields of the Iraq war theatre. "As a former soldier, I am offering all of you, an
invitation to write this former guardsman"(dennisandrews@cableone.net) Please guys, write me and give me the opportunity to support you in "real time" ....I have some obvious questions, in the missions, why didn't your foward scouts identify the combatants location for your safety, and the command is given to drop HE(Highly Explosive)105 shells
on your foward-positions to clear out insurgents from ambushing your convoy? farewell and be alert!report abuse
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